In the related art, in a semiconductor manufacturing process, a substrate processing apparatus for processing a substrate such as a semiconductor wafer, for example, a vertical heat treatment apparatus is used. In a vertical heat treatment apparatus, a holder for holding a plurality of wafers in a shelf-like state is disposed in a vertical heat treatment furnace, and film deposition is performed on a substrate by a CVD processing, an ALD processing, or the like.
In such a substrate processing apparatus, a dummy wafer is disposed in order to improve the uniformity of product wafers (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2009-081260). As for the dummy wafer, for example, an unprocessed wafer or a processed wafer is used.